To get a better sense of how hard your heel is striking the ground and to tell if you are controlling the downward phase of the hiplist, try using earplugs! When you wear earplugs you might be able to hear the reverberation caused by each heel strike. If you are falling hard onto the next foot, it will probably seem pretty loud. If you are controlling the descent of your hiplist, your heel strike should be much quieter. For fun, try to walk silently.
Read MoreHaving a supple and strong core is an important part of your walking gait. When you list the pelvis (stand on one leg) the standing side elongates the waist while the lifting side shortens the waist. If your waist and lower back are tight or resist moving and changing shape, then those restrictions may affect how you walk. A simple stretch to do between bouts of walking is the Crescent Stretch. This is essentially a side bend: keep your hips in place stacked over your heels, and tilt to the side to bring one side of your rib cage closer to the pelvis as the other side lengthens away from the pelvis. This will help stretch the muscles on the elongated side. Then to strengthen those same muscles just focus on the waist muscles contracting to bring your body upright. To add a little more load for a deeper stretch and strengthening activity, just extend your arms overhead while you create the "c" curve of your side bend.
Read MoreThe Neutral Knee Pit is an alignment marker that will help you understand how your hip is rotating. If our hips have trouble engaging or stabilizing, a general tendency is for the thighs to internally rotate while walking and standing. You can experience this if you bend your knees and let your knees collapse together. If the hips chronically rotate inward, the feet might start to splay outward to compensate. As a consequence you might experience pain and wear and tear at the knee joint due to the torque created from the feet turning one way and the hips rotating the other. Also, when the hips are internally rotated the muscles around the hip don't have as much leverage to stabilize your thigh when you are in the balancing phase of walking (hip listing and standing on one leg). To begin to find better balance, hip stability, along with healthier ankles and knees, we need to learn what neutral rotation of the hip is. You might think that just by looking at the knee caps you can tell if your knee joint is pointing straight forward and back, but actually the kneecap can travel either side of the knee joint depending on which quadricep muscles are tighter. So, instead, look at the back of the knees - also known as the knee pit. The hamstring tendons pass over each side of the knee joint, when the hip is internally rotated, those tendons and the pit of the knee will appear to point out to the sides, when the hip is eternally rotated, the tendons and knee pit will appear to point towards each other. Neutral alignment and the best way to walk forward is when those tendons and knee pits are pointing straight backwards and are parallel to each other. You can draw on those tendons with a marker to make them more visible. Most of us need to work on the external rotation of the thigh, so while standing, rotate your thighs externally and bring your knee pits to neutral. Notice that the arches and insoles of the feet might lift. The rotation of the hip is a main component that stabilizes the arches of the feet. Once you've externally rotated the thighs and kept your foot on the ground, try standing on one leg. Notice if your ankle and thigh wobble inward and outward. Practice toward maintaining the external rotation while balancing on one leg and you'll find an improvement in your balance, your arches, and your knee health!
Read MoreTry a slow motion walk while keeping the neutral knee-pit. Try it step by step: - Neutral stance - Externally rotate your thighs - Hip list to stand on one leg - Step forward - BUT before putting your weight down onto the next leg: externally rotate that thigh again. - Engage the front leg to pull your body forward while hip listing onto that leg. Keeping the external rotation. - Repeat the process again taking another step forward. Walking in slow motion is a great way to watch the tendency of the hips to collapse into internal rotation, and then to train your external hip rotators to remain engaged and keep your hips stable.
Read MoreThere's a lot of emphasis lately on getting in a certain number of steps per day. But I feel that being too concerned with a strict regimen can hinder then enjoyment of walking and the sense of accomplishment for any distance moved in a day. Plus, the body does best with lots of variance in not only types of movement but also with frequency and duration as well. My suggestion is to plan on walking varying distances throughout the week: some days, you may hike for 7 miles, others you may only walk 1 mile, and others you may walk by going to the store or simply around your room. Think of any movement as input for the body. Remember to celebrate and enjoy all the steps you take.
Read MoreHaving mobile joints in your feet is important for being able to maintain balance, increasing the sensory feedback from your feet to your brain, and for your hip's ability to stabilize your leg while walking. It may seem prudent to avoid stepping on uneven objects on your path, but for the sake of mobilizing your feet, I suggest pausing your walk and spending a little time stepping onto an uneven and hard surface. This is easier done if you walk barefoot or with minimalist shoes, but you can practice simply by taking off your shoes for a short period during a walk. Find an object that is hard and uneven such as a rock and simply put your foot over it and apply pressure down. Put as much pressure as is tolerable but not painful. It should feel like a stretch. Shift your foot so that you apply pressure to as many parts of the foot and as many angles as possible. As you apply pressure, the intention is to allow the joints of the foot to mold over the object. The more your foot can conform to the earth underneath you, the better able you will be to adjust your balance and gait.
Read MoreWalking uphill or climbing stairs is a great way to develop the hip and butt muscles for the posterior driven gait. But how you step up matters for your butt! Put your foot up onto the next step, and then observe how you tend to step up. Do you lean forward and use your hands on your knee? That's fine, but probably shows your legs may be tired or not have the strength to carry your body and so are utilizing the help of the arms. Does your knee shift forward over or past the toes and do you lean your body forward over the leg first before stepping up? That's also fine, but shows that your habit is to mostly use the quadriceps and your knee joints for walking up. I want to emphasize that any method of getting you where you want to go is the body's intelligence at work. But the body will tend to default to where it has the most strength already. So, to develop more hip and butt strength try this: rather than leaning your body forward or shifting your knee forward, when you step the foot up, keep that knee vertically over the ankle (don't let it shift forward), and use the leg to push down and pull back. As the leg straightens your body should be pulled up and on top of the leg. It may be challenging but this will develop that hip and butt strength for your posterior driven gait. Once again: Step up knee vertically over ankle push the leg down and pull back to bring your body up over the leg try to keep your body upright. Then when you walk on flatter ground you may really feel that posterior driven gait!
Read MoreA common complaint in walking downhill is pain in the knees. This could be an indication of leading with the knee bending as you walk downhill and possibly falling forward onto the next step which results in more impact through the whole body and especially in the knees. One way to protect the knees and to walk with more control downhill is to use the hip list. In the case of walking downhill, you'll focus on the eccentric or lowering phase of the hip list. Although the knee of the standing leg will bend eventually depending on the steepness of the hill or the length of your gait, try to keep the legs as straight as possible until you have to bend the knee. This way you'll develop control of the lateral hip muscles to lower the next foot down. You can also add an exercise of lowering the leg that is reaching forward, but instead of taking the next step, back right up onto the previous foot. This will help you learn to keep control of the leg you're standing on without falling forward onto the next leg. Focus on downward listing as your walk downhill, and you'll feel much better in the knees!
Read MoreA posterior driven gait requires that you have some amount of hip extension available. However, many of us lack the range of motion in the hip necessary due to the frequency of time we spend in hip flexion (think how often your thighs are in front of the hips). For this reason, it's important to "uncast" our hips from the position of our chairs, etc. by standing and stretching those hip flexors as much as possible. One fantastic stretch is the classic "runner's" stretch or quad stretch. Simply stand on one leg and grab the ankle of the other leg. You can use this stretch as a way to assess how much tension you carry in the front of the thighs in relation to how much strength you have in the back of the thighs.
Read MoreYou need mobility in three particular areas for your healthy walking gait. You need extension in your hips, flexion in the ankle, and one that is often overlooked is the extension in the toes. The final phase of extending your leg back behind you happens when the back heel leaves the ground and the toes extend back. If your toes don't have the ability to flex, then chances are you may spin your foot out or in to avoid those toe joints and that may contribute to the turn out o the foot or the instability in your ankle. Or, you might adopt another strategy of simply lifting the back foot off the ground too early which may result in you falling forward onto the next leg. To work on this simply practice pausing between steps, let the back heel lift as you bring your weight onto the front leg and keep the toes and ball of the back foot on the ground. You can spend a moment feeling the stretch and extension of the toes and if you pivot your heel side to side you can explore different stretches on each toe. Another way to develop toe extension is to squat on your haunches balancing on the balls of the feet, or lower down to hands and knees (quadruped) with the toes tucked, or even practice lunges with the back toes tucked. The more mobility in the toes and feet, the better your gait!
Read MoreOne intention in this teaching is to learn how to get better use of your whole body rather than overusing some areas while underusing others. In this case, we can find a way to get more use of the whole leg while walking uphill if we intentionally use our calves. This exercise will also be helpful if you walk longer distances and start to feel fatigued through the knees, hips, and thighs.
Calf Elevators are common exercises for strengthening the calves, but here we can apply them to walking uphill:
Take a step uphill but keep your weight on the back leg. In fact, you can test your weight and balance by lifting the front foot off the ground and then setting it back down. Then, use the calf muscles of the back leg to elevate the heel off the ground. Test your weight (and balance) again by lifting the front foot and setting it back down and see if you can keep the back heel up. Then go ahead and use your hip and butt muscles of the front leg to carry your body onto that leg and toward the next step. Take your next step up the hill and repeat the process.
Once you've played with keeping your weight on the back leg, elevating onto the ball of the foot, and keeping your balance, then try incorporating the calf elevator into your walk uphill. This simply decreases the amount of work that your thigh and butt muscles have to do to carry you uphill and brings about a more equal distribution of muscle activity through the whole leg.
Read MoreThroughout this series, we've been focusing on one aspect of our walking gait at a time. This is because so much happens in quick succession and at the same time. Focusing on too many things at once is just not possible, unless, we slow it way down. So in this exercise, we'll practice walking in slow motion. The slower the better. Try to pay attention to your stance, your hip list, pulling back from the standing leg, letting your floating leg swing forward and lowering that heel with control to the ground, keeping your back heel on the ground as long as you can, then pulling back with that new front leg, rising onto the ball of the back foot extending the toes, listing onto the front leg, experience a moment of balance, and begin the whole process again. Being mindful of each phase of your step and walking in slow motion is both great practice and a fantastic meditation.
Read MoreThis episode is the culmination of all the exercises, games, and alignment points we’ve been working on to develop our posterior driven gait. Think of this as a meditation while walking. Take a walk with me and use this audio recording to direct your attention to one aspect of your walking gait at a time. Then, use this as a template to make it your own. If there are a few exercises, tips, or games you’d like to work on, make them into a sequence and simply direct your attention to them for a few minutes at a time while you walk.
There are more meditations, games, bonuses exercises, and discussions included in this series, but as of now you have all the tools you need to develop a new sense of freedom while walking.
Happy walking and I’ll see you on the path!
Patrick
Read MoreThanks for walking with me on this "While You Walk" Journey! I hope you found it enjoyable and that you developed some awarenesses and skills you can take with you while you walk throughout your life. Much of what is presented here are the foundations for a good walking gait, and with each exercise there's many nuances and progressions that could be explored. If you wish to go deeper, try some of the other offerings on my website:
- Virtual Class Library
- Other E-courses
- Weekly Live Stream Zoom classes
or
schedule a private session!
In any case, no matter where you go, I wish you well and I hope to see you out there walking!
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